1. After years of waiting for God to bring the right man her way, Charity Singleton becomes Charity Craig in a surprise wedding, with she and her love lingering long on the vow, “in sickness and in health.”

2. In a culture that seems obsessed with young love, I appreciate how Kelli Trujillo sings the praises old love: “It’s the ‘long-loved loves,’ to borrow a phrase from Madeleine L’Engle, that I am being taught by real life to admire. Like wine growing richer and fuller with age, this is where the true, hidden beauty can be found.”

4. I was so moved by Alia Joy’s painful journey of a love almost lost, all the brokenness and failure coming around to redemption and faithfulness. Just soak in these poetic lines: “I am no longer fresh-faced, but these eyes can see. The days of labor and hard work drift off your skin and smell like faithfulness. We have known thorns but still plant and reap. There’s beauty here. We no longer feel our rings, but they have encircled our family.”

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This post is part of our Take Heart series. This week we’ve been talking about taking heart in the struggles of singleness, marriage, loss and abandonment.

I combed through gritty words and searched for my own like a beachcomber after high tide. I pictured this particular shell opening up to look like a butterfly with wings spread. I imagined the swish of the surf, like young love, and then straight away came the weight of the cargo ships in bay. If I was going to write authentically in response to this part of Gift from the Sea for my summer book club, I had to write about the days of swollen eyes and headaches and doubt.

I would have rather taken the whole experience, tied a rock around it and thrown it out to sea, but something told me I had to write it down. I had to write my brokenness. Maybe sharing about a confusing and embarrassingly immature time in my life could help some other young woman choose true love over fear, just as a mentor’s wise words had helped me.

We don’t want to hide behind the happy highlight reel or go around looking like a 50s sitcom star vacuuming in a dress and pearls, but neither do we want to be the girl without a filter, spewing teenage angst on our readers.

Before I went to Influence, I weighed in with other attendees on Nish Weiseth’s final preparations for her talk “Blogging Dangerously,” asking how we can decide what’s appropriate, how we can discern the difference between just trying to be edgy to get attention and writing something hard or thought-provoking that could really make a difference.

Sometimes, in order to speak authentically on an issue or experience, and to let people know they’re not alone, we have to write outside the lines and share stories of our own failure or brokenness. But even when we write dangerously, we need to do so with some sense of caution.

Nish wisely encouraged us to begin with praying about our idea, asking our Counselor for wisdom. Why share this particular story? Is the risk of conflict or misunderstanding worth it? Next, we ask permission from others who may be affected by the story. How do your people feel about it? The trust and security in our closest relationships should always come before any supposed benefit for our wider circle of readers.

It took me a whole day to edit “The Butterfly Effect”. I shared it with my husband and had him redline anything that made him uncomfortable. I shared it with my mom who had prayed me through the drama to begin with. She did some more redlining. They became the filter I needed when emotion had clouded mine.

Finally, when I had permission to publish the piece, I wondered if readers would make false assumptions about the validity of my relationship or make judgments about my emotional stability. Yet, I felt the risk was worth the possibility of reminding people like me that strong love is based on trust and that while the butterfly sensations of different phases are not illusion, neither are they are a fit foundation for relationship.

That day after I’d put my story out into blog world, I followed a random string of links and comments and more links that led me to three other blog posts covering similar issues. I felt a camaraderie in my writing when I had just hours ago felt odd and alone. Here was a little group of us synchronized by the Spirit to put this truth into the blogosphere that particular day…to challenge those who mistakenly believe that romantic feeling is the substance of relationship, when it is really just an accessory like a seashell on a shelf.

{How do you decide what sensitive topics and personal struggles are publishable? What stories of others’ weakness, failure or brokenness have ministered to you? What stories have you shared from your own life and what has been the result?}

Welcome…. Come on in! I’m Darcy Wiley, a writer married to a literary agent, a world traveler and stay-at-home mom, and a Christian woman who is finding that the loveliest things often come in the most ordinary containers. Read more...